Xanadu - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Description of Xanadu by Toghon Temur (1368)

The lament of Toghon Temur Khan (the "Ukhaant Khan" or "Sage Khan"), concerning the loss of Daidu (Beijing) and Heibun Shanduu (Kaiping Xanadu) in 1368, is recorded in many Mongolian historical chronicles. The Altan Tobchi

Altan Tobchi

The Altan Tobchi, or Golden Summary , is a 17th century Mongolian chronicle written by Guush Luvsandanzan. Its full title is "Herein is contained the Golden Summary of the Principles of Statecraft as established by the Ancient Khans". Mongolian scholars typically call the work the "Lu Altan Tovch"...

version is translated as follows:

"My Daidu, straight and wonderfully made of various jewels of different kinds
My Yellow Steppe of Xanadu, the summer residence of ancient Khans
My cool and pleasant Kaiping Xanadu
My dear Daidu that I've lost on the year of the bald red rabbit
Your pleasant mist when on early mornings I ascended to the heights!
Lagan and Ibagu made it known to me, the Sage Khan.
In full knowledge I let go of dear Daidu
Nobles born foolish cared not for their state
I was left alone weeping
I became like a calf left behind on its native pastures
My eight-sided white stupa made of various precious objects
My City of Daidu made of the nine jewels
Where I sat holding the reputation of the Great Nation
My great square City of Daidu with four gates
Where I sat holding the reputation of the Forty Tumen Mongols
My dear City of Daidu, the iron stair has been broken.
My reputation!
My precious Daidu, from where I surveyed and observed
The Mongols of every place.
My city with no winter residence to spend the winter
My summer residence of Kaiping Xanadu
My pleasant Yellow Steppe
My deadly mistake of not heeding the words of Lagan and Ibagu!
The Cane Palace had been established in sanctity
Kublai the Wise Khan spent his summers there!
I have lost Kaiping Xanadu entirely - to China.
An impure bad name has come upon the Sage Khan.
They besieged and took precious Daidu
I have lost the whole of it - to China.
A conflicting bad name has come upon the Sage Khan.
Jewel Daidu was built with many an adornment
In Kaiping Xanadu, I spent the summers in peaceful relaxation
By a hapless error they have been lost - to China.
A circling bad name has come upon the Sage Khan.
The awe-inspiring reputation carried by the Lord Khan
The dear Daidu built by the extraordinary Wise Khan (Kublai)
The bejeweled Hearth City, the revered sanctuary of the entire nation
Dear Daidu
I have lost it all - to China.
The Sage Khan, the reincarnation of all bodhisattvas,
By the destiny willed by Khan Tengri (King Heaven) has lost dear Daidu,
Lost the Golden Palace of the Wise Khan (Kublai), who is the reincarnation of all the gods,
Who is the golden seed of Genghis Khan the son of Khan Tengri (King Heaven).
I hid the Jade Seal of the Lord Khan in my sleeve and left (the city)
Fighting through a multitude of enemies, I broke through and left.
From the fighters may Buqa-Temur Chinsan for ten thousand generations
Become a Khan in the golden line of the Lord Khan.
Caught unaware I have lost dear Daidu.
When I left home, it was then that the jewel of religion and doctrine was left behind.
In the future may wise and enlightened bodhisattvas take heed and understand.
May it go around and establish itself
On the Golden Lineage of Genghis Khan."

Xanadu in the travel book of Samuel Purchas (1625)

In 1614, the English clergyman Samuel Purchas published Purchas his Pilgrimage - or Relations of the world and the Religions observed in all ages and places discovered, from the Creation unto this Present. This book contained a brief description of Xanadu, based on the early description of Marco Polo:

"In Xandu did Cublai Can build a stately Pallace, encompassing sixteen miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumpuous house of pleasure, which may be moved from place to place."

In 1625 Samuel Purchas

Samuel Purchas

Samuel Purchas , was an English travel writer, a near-contemporary of Richard Hakluyt.Purchas was born at Thaxted, Essex, and graduated at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1600; later he became a B.D., and with this degree was admitted at Oxford in 1615. In 1604 he was presented by James I to the...

published an expanded edition of this book, recounting the voyages of famous travelers. called Purchas his Pilgrimes . The eleventh volume of this book included a more detailed description of Xanadu, attributed to Marco Polo and dated 1320:

"This Citie is three dayes journey Northeastward to the Citie Xandu, which the Chan Cublai now reigning built; erecting therein a marvellous and artificiall Palace of Marble and other stones, which abutteth on the wall on one side, and the midst of the Citie on the other. He included sixteene miles within the circuit of the wall on that side where the Palace abutteth on the Citie wall, into which none can enter but by the Palace. In this enclosure or Parke are goodly meadows, springs, rivers, red and fallow Deere, Fawnes carrying thither for the Hawkes (of whom are three mewed above two hundred Gerfalcons which he goeth once a week to see) and he often useth one Leopard or more, sitting on Horses, which he setteth upon the Stagges and Deere, and having taken the beast, giveth it to the Gerfalcons, and in beholding this spectacle he taketh wonderful delight. In the middest in a faire wood he hath a royall House on pillars gilded and varnished, on every inch of which is a Dragon all gilt, which windeth his tayle about the pillar, which his head bearing up the loft, as also with his wings displayed on both sides; the cover also is of Reeds gilt and varnished, so that the rayne can doe it no injury; the reeds being three handfuls thick and ten yards log, split from knot to knot. The house itselfe also may be sundered, and taken downe like a Tent and erected again. For it is sustained, when it is set up, with two hundred silken cordes. Great Chan useth to dwell there three moneths in the yeare, to wit, in June, July and August.

Xanadu in the Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797)

In 1797, according to his own account, the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

was reading about Xanadu in Purchas his Pilgrimage, fell asleep, and had an opium-inspired dream. The dream caused him to begin the poem known as 'Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep in 1816...

'. Unfortunately Coleridge's writing was interrupted by an unnamed "man from Porlock," causings him to forget much of the dream, but his images of Xanadu became one of the best-known poems in the English language.

Coleridge described how he wrote the poem in the preface to his collection of poems, Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep, published in 1816:

"In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 'Purchas's Pilgrimage':

Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.
The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved." "A person on business from Porlock" interrupted him and he was never able to recapture more than "some eight or ten scattered lines and images."

Coleridge's description of Xanadu has echoes of the works of both Marco Polo and Samuel Purchas. In his description of Xanadu, Marco Polo wrote:

"...Round this Palace a wall is built, inclosing a compass of sixteen miles, and inside the Park there are fountains and rivers and brooks and beautiful meadows, with all kinds of wild animals (excluding such as are of ferocious nature)...

This became, in Purchas's book Purchas his Pilgrimage:

In Xandu did Cublai Can build a stately Pallace, encompassing sixteen miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumpuous house of pleasure, which may be moved from place to place.

This became, in Coleridge's poem:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

"So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. (lines 1-11)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Description of Xanadu by Toghon Temur (1368)

Xanadu in the travel book of Samuel Purchas (1625)

Xanadu in the Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797)

See also

External links